The Evolution of the Web [Infographic]

Cast your mind back to a time, not that long ago, when the Internet was fresh and young. It was the mid-1990s, and the first web browsers crawled forth from the primordial ooze, and into our hearts. To celebrate the third birthday of Chrome, Google commissioned this handsome infographic chronicling the great grand-daddy’s of today’s modern browsers.

What’s really fun about this graphic is that it’s built in HTML5 and fully interactive. More than just pretty to look at, it’s chock-full of factoids about the growth of the net, as well as some useful information about how tools like HTML developed. Perhaps the most interesting are the screenshots of various versions of each browser, with each set practically a museum unto itself.

Part historical timepiece and part show-off of their own browser, it’s a glimpse back into the foundational days of the Internet we all take for granted.